Hear the Record Company’s Bluesy ‘Hard Day Coming Down’

Caught halfway between the stomp of mid-century rock & roll and the soulful kick of Delta blues, the Record Company kick up a raw, rootsy racket with “Hard Day Coming Down.” It’s a melancholic song, delivered from the perspective of a down-and-out man who’s low on love, luck and cash. Driven forward by honking harmonica and a guitar riff that’s more Led Zeppelin than John Lee Hooker, “Hard Day Coming Down” still breaks a sweat, even as it sheds a few tears.

“Whether it be loss, love or just fighting through it all, everybody eventually has a day where they walk through their front door to find out what a ‘Hard Day Coming Down’ means to them,” says frontman Chris Vos, who co-founded the trio in a Los Feliz basement in Los Angeles. 

The band’s debut, Give It Back to You (released tomorrow, February 12th), shines a light on a group whose sound owes less to the West Coast city in which it was created and more to the backwoods juke joints that songs like “Hard Day Coming Down” evoke. Vos plays an overdriven acoustic guitar rather than an electric instrument, and bandmates Alex Stiff and Marc Cazorla back him up with hand-clapped percussion, a grunting “uh huh, uh huh” refrain and the steady pulse of a kick-drummed beat. The blues may be nothing new, but the Record Company wring new life out of old traditions.